A little over 2 decades ago I came to, very slowly, in an increasingly familiar fuzzy stupor. I was in a darkened hotel room in Seoul with a woman who promised she could “Get you out of the sack with more of a kick than even the strongest mug of coffee”. The night before had finished at 3am when the soju had mercifully run out. It was now the unholy hour of 06:15 and the woman in question was 'The Caffeine Queen' broadcasting over the American Forces Network, Eagle FM. It was her mission to chase some 37,000 US troops out of their cots every morning and drive them punctually via the showers into the mess. To prove how adept she was at this, she sequenced 'You Oughta Know' by the rapidly charting Alanis Morissette followed relentlessly by Rainbow, Aerosmith and Meat Loaf - clearly she was leaving no man behind. As for me, stumbling into the hotel bathroom provided no refuge; the radio was piped in there too ! As I sidled gingerly under the cool water The Caffeine Queen asked her listeners coyly if they knew the difference between a hotel room and a white BMW ? She confessed that actually she didn't know, but evidently neither did Hugh Grant until two of LA's finest stopped to explain it to him, personally, at length, in painstaking detail.
Having just pocketed a 'mere $100k' from an endearing signature performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Grant was on track to command a more respectable $6m for his next movie before being busted for a 'lewd act' in a car with Divine Marie Brown. LA police were alerted by the rear brake lights of Grant's parked car which lit up repeatedly and with a certain rhythm. In the media frenzy which followed, Grant's fee for FWAAF positively wilted under The Sun's scorching offer of a 'mere $150k' to Ms Brown to tell all. Indeed one film producer pondered seriously if Grant had possibly jeopardised his whole career; observing wryly that "Sean Penn could get away with this. But not Hugh Grant".
Having just pocketed a 'mere $100k' from an endearing signature performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Grant was on track to command a more respectable $6m for his next movie before being busted for a 'lewd act' in a car with Divine Marie Brown. LA police were alerted by the rear brake lights of Grant's parked car which lit up repeatedly and with a certain rhythm. In the media frenzy which followed, Grant's fee for FWAAF positively wilted under The Sun's scorching offer of a 'mere $150k' to Ms Brown to tell all. Indeed one film producer pondered seriously if Grant had possibly jeopardised his whole career; observing wryly that "Sean Penn could get away with this. But not Hugh Grant".
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| Him: "I've always had a crush on cheerleaders. Catholic cheerleaders—my double favorite," |
Given Grant's close-but-not-exclusive relationship with the peerless Ms Hurley, the story immediately gained a life of its own. It showed that even without the internet, even in parts of the world without radio, places which still relied on carrier pigeons, smoke signals or tea leaves, news like this was never going to remain secret.
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| Hurley: "Really ? I mean.... R-E-A-L-L-Y ?" |
For those of us who were not trying to bail out a film career by elevating the miserable apology into a new British art form, the real world was really picking up the pace and nowhere more so than South Korea.
Since the 1990's Seoul is regularly referred to as The Miracle on the Han River in reference to the speed and size of it's growth and prosperity since the 1970's. Currently it is home to an astonishing 50% of the country’s population of 50 million, making it the world’s fifth largest megacity, behind Tokyo, Jakarta, Delhi and Manila in that order.
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| Identical views of Seoul in 1929 and 2009 - documenting phenomenal development, most notably from the 1970's onwards |
In 1979 the most expensive office building was the Daewoo Building in central Seoul, directly opposite Seoul Railway Station. The building is 118m tall and for almost 20 years the chairman of the mighty Daewoo chaebol ruled his empire from the top floor, making the building a monument to the new-found economic success of Daewoo and South Korea in general. Sadly Daewoo imploded in the 1997-1998 financial crisis, after which the building languished until 2006 when it was ill-advisedly bought by Morgan Stanley as part of its global real-estate portfolio. Only 4 years later the building became infamous as the centrepiece of the largest ever loss in real-estate private equity funds as Morgan Stanley booked an exceptional write down of 60% on the protfolio.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2010/04/123_64829.html
In time-honoured tradition the famous folly was rapidly renamed 'Seoul Square' and today it houses the regional headquarters of various global conglomerates including Siemens and Mercedes Benz, as well as the German and Chinese embassies.
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| Happy Days: a light mural on the facade of Seoul Square. The new face of the old seat of the Daewoo Empire. |
By 1985 the title of Seoul's tallest structure passed to 'The 63 Building'. Standing 250m high it was double the height of the Daewoo Building and was the tallest building outside of North America at the time. Built on the south bank of the river, it signaled that the centre of finance and wealth was moving out from Seoul's old city centre and across the river.
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| Seoul's 63 Building; at 250m, still the world's tallest gold clad building since 1985 |
This is not to say that the Miracle on the Han River has gone without some painful hitches. Early one morning in Oct 1994 one deck of the Seongsu Bridge fell into the river without warning. The bridge was only 15 years old. Amazingly there were only 32 fatalities, although many of these were schoolchildren.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/22/world/32-reported-dead-as-bridge-collapses-in-seoul.html?scp=1&sq=++seoul&st=nyt
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| The builder of the bridge, the Dong Ah Construction Industrial Company, appears to have cut corners on welding to finish the bridge quickly, the Korean Society of Civil Engineers said |
However this incident was totally eclipsed less than a year later when the Sampoong Dept store collapsed in June 1995 with 500 deaths and almost 1,000 injured.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/27/seoul-sampoong-department-store-disaster-history-cities-50-buildings
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| The Sampoong Dept store collapse in June 1995: The most fatalities in a building collapse until New York 9/11 2001 |
Today the citizens of Seoul are waiting for the grand opening of the city's next great landmark; the Lotte World Tower. Its 123 floors and 555m height make it the tallest building in the OECD - for the moment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/realestate/commercial/in-seoul-lotte-world-tower-rises-leery-koreans-watch.html?_r=0
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| The Lotte World Tower was topped out in Dec 2015: a reminder of the distinguished legacy of the founder of the Lotte chaebol. Note the relentless spread of normal high rise over the hills and far away. |
The founder of the Lotte chaebol is Mr Shin Kyuk-ho, already in his 90's. So important is the completion of this project and so subtle is the influence of Lotte that a military runway was realigned so that construction of the tower could go ahead.
Curiously not everyone is convinced of the distinguished legacy of the Lotte founder. The chaebol now finds itself at the centre of an unprecedented investigation of its business affairs and has responded by hiring five of the country's top law firms to defend it.
http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160617000708&ntn=0
http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=184170
No doubt there's more to this story to follow later ;)
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